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Page 1: The Lean Startup

The Lean Startup

Low Burn by Design not Crisis

Steve Blank and Eric Ries

Page 2: The Lean Startup

Founding IMVU

! Customer Discovery and Validation

– Founded company in April 2004

– Sat in Steve Blank’s B-school class Fall of

2004

" Shipped in 6 months

" Charged from Day 1

" No press releases

Page 3: The Lean Startup

The Economy

Before

• Cash was readily available

• Follow on financing was readily available

After

• Debt markets are tight

• IPO & M&A window closed

• VC!s deep pessimism

Venture fund returns have been on decline for a decade - no end insight

Page 4: The Lean Startup

State of Startups

• High burn rate

• Swing for the fences

• Full management teams

• Assume customer is known

• Assume features are known

• Assumes growth is by execution

Traditional startups are fighting yesterday’s war

Page 5: The Lean Startup

Top Gun dogfight scene

Page 6: The Lean Startup

Warfare Changes Forever

Page 7: The Lean Startup

Boyd: Winning is about Agility

The OODA Loop

• Observe

• Orient

• Decide

• Act

Page 8: The Lean Startup

Boyd Redefines the Rules to Win

• Agility requires a continuouscycle of interactions with theenvironment

• But you can’t do it from a desk

Page 9: The Lean Startup

Winners are Those Who Can Move

Faster Than Their Competitors

• Winning requires constantassessment of change andways to mitigate risk

• Iterating faster thancompetitors yieldssubstantial advantage

Page 10: The Lean Startup

Facing Reality at Today’s Startup

There is no 2nd Place

• Uncertain environment

• Rapid, unanticipated changesthat lead to disorientation

• Constant threats to any initiative

• Burn rate (time, fuel, bullets,dollars) limits window ofopportunity

Page 11: The Lean Startup

Using OODA to Create “Lean Startups”

And Changing the Startup Rules

CustomerDevelopment

Agile Product

Development

Page 12: The Lean Startup

CustomerDevelopment

Agile Product

Development

Lean StartupsBuilding a New Wave of Companies in Silicon Valley

• Continuous customerinteraction

• Revenue goals from day one

• No scaling until revenue

•• Assumes customer andAssumes customer andfeatures are features are unknownsunknowns

• Low Burn by Design - NotCrisis

Page 13: The Lean Startup

IMVU

Page 14: The Lean Startup

Founding IMVU

• History:

- Company founded in April 2004

- Founders audit Steve Blank's B-school class Fall of 2004

• Tactics:

- Shipped in 6 months

- Charged from Day 1

- No press releases

- Ship 20 times a day

• Results:

- Continuous iteration with customers

- 2007 revenues of $10MM

• Here's what it looked like to their first venture investors

Page 15: The Lean Startup

Customer Discovery & Validation

Q4 2004

• Product:

– 3D IM add-on for hanging outonline with friends

• Piggy back on existing buddylists and IM programs

• Our customers told us:

– Avatar customization is the keyappeal.

– “Add-on” concept is confusing.They actually want a separatebuddy list.

• So we:

– Ditched the IM add-on idea

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Customer Discovery & Validation

Q1 and Q2 2005

• Product:

– 3D IM service for hanging out withfriends and meeting people

• Introduced Chat Now feature (instantmatching) !

• Our customers told us:

– Meeting new friends is as importantas talking with existing friends(50/50) !

– Not enough people on IMVU

– Retention is a problem

• So we:

– Scaled up our advertising budget (to$40/day) !

– Learned about retention from marketleaders (Cyworld, Myspace) !

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Page 17: The Lean Startup

Customer Discovery & Validation

Q3 2005

• Product:

– 3D IM service plus avatar home pages

• Introduced avatar home pages, plusmessages, gifts, picture galleries blogs

• Our customers are telling us:

– Avatar home pages are highly addictive

– 2D and 3D complement each other

– Messages in home pages and realtimeinteraction complement each other

– Want more than two avatars perwindow: parties and chat rooms

– Fix the bugs; polish

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CustomerDevelopment

Agile Product

Development

Lean Startup Principles

Extraordinary Value at Low cost in Little Time

• Leverages:

- Technology commoditization

- Agile management practices

- Customer Development

• Designed to test hypothesisand answer the unknowns

Page 19: The Lean Startup

Agile Product

Development

The Lean Startup

Agile Product Development

• Continuous cycle ofProduct Development

- Product release cycle inhours not years

- Tightly coupled with customerdevelopment

- Minimum feature sets,maximum customer coverage

Page 20: The Lean Startup

What has changed? TechnologyLean Startups Leverage Commoditized Technology

Open Source/Commodity Technology

Licensed Software/Proprietary Hardware

Page 21: The Lean Startup

Problem: known Solution: known

Waterfall

Product Development a la MicrosoftUnit of progress: Advance to Next Stage

Page 22: The Lean Startup

Problem: known Solution: unknown

Agile (XP)!

“Product Owner” or in-house customer

Product Development at Typical Venture StartupAssumes Customers and Markets are Understood

Page 23: The Lean Startup

Problem: unknown Solution: unknown

Customer Development Engineering

Scale

Company

Customer

DiscoveryCustomer

Validation

Customer

Creation

Hypotheses, experiments, insights

Data, feedback, insights

Product Development at Lean StartupAssumes Customers and Markets are Unknown

Page 24: The Lean Startup

CustomerDevelopment

The Lean StartupCustomer Development

• Continuous cycle ofcustomer interaction

- Rapid hypothesis testing aboutmarket, pricing, customers, …

- Extreme low cost, low burn,tight focus

- Measurable gates for investors

Page 25: The Lean Startup

The Lean StartupCustomer Development Parallels Agile Development

Customer Development

CompanyBuilding

CustomerDiscovery

CustomerValidation

CustomerCreation

Agile Development

Concept /Concept /

Business PlanBusiness PlanAgileAgile

DevelopmentDevelopmentContinuousContinuous

TestTestContinuousContinuous

ShipShip

Page 26: The Lean Startup

Customer DevelopmentTurns Market Risk/Product Fit Hypothesis into Facts

• Discovery

- Test hypotheses I.e. problem and product concept

• Validation

- Build a repeatable and scalable sales process

• Creation

- Create end-user demand and fill the sales pipeline

• Building

- Scale via relentless execution

CompanyBuilding

CustomerDiscovery

CustomerValidation

CustomerCreation

Page 27: The Lean Startup

Lean Startup Advantages

• Builds low-burn companies by design

- Low cost market risk testing

• Organized around learning and

discovery

• Right model for current conditions

CustomerDevelopment

Agile Product

Development

The next wave of capital efficient startups